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Hundreds of Amazon employees on Monday issued statements blasting their own employer and calling for the company to do more to fight climate change. Some employees also praised Amazon's decision last September to order 100,000 electric vans—part of the company's climate change initiative. But others argued that Amazon's policies so far are inadequate given the scale of the climate change problem.

"Amazon can and should do more," wrote Amazon employee Nolan Woodle. "We should end our contracts with oil and gas companies that are using our services to locate, drill for, and extract fossil fuels."

"Big Tech has the opportunity to not only change the world but change the planet," wrote another employee, Rabecca Rocha.

The coordinated action was in pointed defiance of an Amazon policy banning employees from speaking publicly about corporate policies. Last year, protests by Amazon employees helped to convince management to announce new measures to combat climate change. But since then, Amazon has warned several employees that they could face disciplinary action—including termination—if they continued to speak to the media about Amazon's business practices.

Amazon insists that this isn't a new policy—and that it isn't unusual in corporate America. The company also asserts that it shares the employees' concerns about climate change.

"Of course we are passionate about these issues," a spokesperson told Ars by email. The spokesperson noted that the company has committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

At the same time, the spokesperson said that the company "will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems."

Employees are getting more assertive across the tech sector

In recent years, employees across the technology sector have become more aggressive about challenging the practices of their employers. In 2017, for example, employee allegations of rampant sexual harassment at Uber contributed to the ouster of CEO Travis Kalanick.

In recent years, Google has faced employee pressure to end work on drones for the US military, to cancel plans for a censored Chinese search engine, and to revamp the company's sexual harassment policies.

Now Amazon is facing an employee revolt of its own. Though 364 employees represents a tiny fraction of Amazon's workforce, it's likely to be too many people for the company to fire en masse.

Most worker statements have focused on the need for Amazon to do more to fight climate change. In particular, employees object to Amazon selling cloud computing services to oil and gas companies. A page on Amazon's website specifically touts the use of Amazon Web Service for oil and gas exploration.

Workers raised other concerns, too. Employee Hilda Marshall blasted Amazon for "abusing warehouse employees with inhumane quotas"—a concern shared by several others. Some employees faulted Amazon for working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One employee criticized Amazon for contributing to conservative candidates in the 2019 election for Seattle's city council.

It's a tricky situation for Amazon's management because Amazon is in a constant competition for talent with rivals like Google and Microsoft. Technology employees like to not only earn a generous paycheck—they also like to feel good about the company they work for. Firing hundreds of employees could create a lot of ill will and harm Amazon's efforts to recruit top employees.

On the other hand, having Amazon workers openly criticizing their own management isn't great for either worker morale or the company's public image.

Amazon seemed to be trying to head off employee criticism last September when it announced its climate initiative the day before a planned employee protest. But while that announcement may have satisfied some Amazon workers, it didn't fully quell the employee revolt.

156 Reader Comments

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

There are lots of times when I don't care much when I'll get stuff. And there are LOTS more times when Amazon Delivery screws up - far, far more often than UPS, USPS, or FedEx. Give me the choice of how and when my stuff will be delivered, and it'll probably work out better for everyone.

Just to reiterate: I would NEVER choose Amazon Delivery. Their befouled delivery rate is currently running around 50%.

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

There are lots of times when I don't care much when I'll get stuff. And there are LOTS more times when Amazon Delivery screws up - far, far more often than UPS, USPS, or FedEx. Give me the choice of how and when my stuff will be delivered, and it'll probably work out better for everyone.

Just to reiterate: I would NEVER choose Amazon Delivery. Their befouled delivery rate is currently running around 50%.

They arrive in different packaging because of where the items are located. There's three warehouses in the greater Seattle area, each warehouse keeps a bunch of different things and very few of the same things (other than the most popular selling items I imagine)

It's probably easier (and cheaper) for them to put it in a package, and put it on one of their delivery trucks than deliver it to another warehouse, process it, and then put it into one package to ship to you all at once.

Though 364 employees represents a tiny fraction of Amazon's workforce, it's likely to be too many people for the company to fire en masse.

Wanna bet?

depends on how the employees are spread out.

If it's 364 employees at one distribution center or one work location? The yeah, probably won't all be fired en masse since it'll disrupt the operations. They'll just let them go over the next month or so.

But if it's spread out over like 5-6 locations? Yeah. definitely fired on the spot.

I know it’s fashionable to beat up on “big oil”, but who does Nathan Woodle think is consuming a large proportion of that oil? The consumer, no? Why don’t consumers make better choices to put big oil out of business.

If you actually read the post, most/all of the folks are in operations positions and/or supporting AWS. I suspect that the folks in the warehouses are too busy meeting their quotas to be able to post anything one way or the other.

Turfing out a bunch of engineers working on the next bunch of services for AWS could be quite a bit more painful than turfing out a few warehouse workers that likely have replacements already in the interviewing queue.

We should end our contracts with oil and gas companies that are using our services to locate, drill for, and extract fossil fuels.

Eh, my experience making software for that industry was that most of those companies were extremely resistant to moving to the cloud in the first place (and most of them haven't for anything significant), I don't know how much this would really accomplish, they are still very comfortable doing everything in-house.

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

I think they're concerned that everyone is on the deck busy getting drunk and partying and too few if any people are even trying to brake the ocean liner.

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

I don't understand this. Of course they offer a choice of shipping methods.. they even have discount coupons if you choose a slower method.

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

I don't understand this. Of course they offer a choice of shipping methods.. they even have discount coupons if you choose a slower method.

I've had some orders recently where I had no choice in the shipping method. They weren't third-party sellers, either -- I checked.

Though 364 employees represents a tiny fraction of Amazon's workforce, it's likely to be too many people for the company to fire en masse.

Wanna bet?

depends on how the employees are spread out.

If it's 364 employees at one distribution center or one work location? The yeah, probably won't all be fired en masse since it'll disrupt the operations. They'll just let them go over the next month or so.

But if it's spread out over like 5-6 locations? Yeah. definitely fired on the spot.

Though 364 employees represents a tiny fraction of Amazon's workforce, it's likely to be too many people for the company to fire en masse.

Wanna bet?

I'm with DOOManiac. I'd take that bet.

It might take a few months to get them all gone. But most or all of them will be fired.

Unless they keep the press talking about it very loudly then it's gonna be this. Human Resources exists to protect the company and will be hard at work to disappear these employees in various ways to dance around labor laws and avoid litigation. Replacing these folks may be a bit more difficult than their warehouse counterparts but it is far, far from impossible.

The point of Amazon is to sell you things. While we all need things, and I buy things on Amazon, producing, packaging and shipping things of this nature is inherently harmful for our environment. When Amazon encourages us to buy anything we don't fundamentally need, this puts the business in opposition to the environment.

Sure, the company can use less packaging, reduce its use of petroleum, improve shipping logistics, move to renewable energy, etc. These are all great, and I'm all for Amazon doing them. It's just that as long as people buy things that they don't need that are produced half way across the world and shipped to them on demand, that's a huge environmental footprint that can't be eliminated by shipping those unnecessary items in less packaging.

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

There are lots of times when I don't care much when I'll get stuff. And there are LOTS more times when Amazon Delivery screws up - far, far more often than UPS, USPS, or FedEx. Give me the choice of how and when my stuff will be delivered, and it'll probably work out better for everyone.

Just to reiterate: I would NEVER choose Amazon Delivery. Their befouled delivery rate is currently running around 50%.

This has changed a bit. Define your "Amazon Day" and select it when you place an order. Mine is Monday of the next week. I get my stuff in 1 box. I can live without instant gratification and its one more box I don't need to break down and put in the recycling bin.

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

If we could greatly reduce the first two on this graph that'd be a fantastic start:

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

If we could greatly reduce the first two on this graph that'd be a fantastic start:

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

If we could greatly reduce the first two on this graph that'd be a fantastic start:

I don't understand why Amazon's delivery policy is basically a black hole. I have no choice over how my items will be shipped, or when. They come as fast as the possibly can, period. That's gratifying, but not really necessary. I've had multiple items, all ordered at the same time, arrive in individual packages all on the same day.

There are lots of times when I don't care much when I'll get stuff. And there are LOTS more times when Amazon Delivery screws up - far, far more often than UPS, USPS, or FedEx. Give me the choice of how and when my stuff will be delivered, and it'll probably work out better for everyone.

Just to reiterate: I would NEVER choose Amazon Delivery. Their befouled delivery rate is currently running around 50%.

I placed an order yesterday, around $60. Instead of the usual $1 digital discount in exchange for accepting slower shipping (which I often accept, usually breaking my multiple item orders into many single orders to get more), it offered me “a discount”. I clicked through on that and the discount was.....34 cents. 34 cents discount to get it 7-10 days later. Why would anyone choose that?

Though 364 employees represents a tiny fraction of Amazon's workforce, it's likely to be too many people for the company to fire en masse.

Wanna bet?

depends on how the employees are spread out.

If it's 364 employees at one distribution center or one work location? The yeah, probably won't all be fired en masse since it'll disrupt the operations. They'll just let them go over the next month or so.

But if it's spread out over like 5-6 locations? Yeah. definitely fired on the spot.

So...virtual jobs that can most easily be exported to overseas contractors that'll work 18 hour days for pennies on the dollar? I think I'd rather be a "hands on" guy in one of the warehouses if I wanted job security. Commuting costs from Ireland or eastern European countries would be working in my favor.....

No, these probably aren't that easy to outsource. Amazon's really aggressive on the tech front and they actually need people with a relatively high level of expertise, so they aren't in a position to bottom-dollar those jobs.

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

If we could greatly reduce the first two on this graph that'd be a fantastic start:

We should end our contracts with oil and gas companies that are using our services to locate, drill for, and extract fossil fuels.

Eh, my experience making software for that industry was that most of those companies were extremely resistant to moving to the cloud in the first place (and most of them haven't for anything significant), I don't know how much this would really accomplish, they are still very comfortable doing everything in-house.

Is it even the kind of thing where Amazon has contracts with these companies that they actively create, or for this kind of AWS stuff is it just a case where the company is just some entity buying compute out of a bin via a web page and they'd have to go digging through everything if they wanted to find and terminate them?

In the rush to go 0 petroleum use, are these activists even aware of how prevalent it is?

Did they ever wonder why the roads or roof shingles are black? What about plastics used in healthcare? Not that we shouldn't look for alternatives and use them when practicable, but you can't just stop this ocean liner on a dime.

If we had acted 20 years ago we wouldn't be in the position of having to stop it on a dime.

For too many years we listened to people who claimed it was a hoax, and then when that fell through they claimed that humans weren't the cause, and when that fell through, they started to complain that activists aren't offering realistic solutions.